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Laws of Magic
Magic within the Mortal Realm follows some rules. Note that these rules are often broken by the magic of the Fae Folk, who seem to be only partially bound by the rules of the Mortal Realm. How it Works Souls are made of condensed magical energy. Mages can harness that energy with an ideological focus to influence the world around them. The magic they use is still connected to the soul, and will eventually return. Since the soul is the source of a person’s sentience and identity, the magic within each person is completely unique. Like oil and water, different magics will not mix, and often react violently when colliding with each other. As a result of all this, any attempts to magically tamper with someone else’s soul- either to change their personality, control their actions, or read their mind- are destined to fail, potentially backfiring to the point of psychologically harming those who try. Magical Collisions Magic is instantly repelled from any other magical source, like similar ends of a magnet. When opposing mages use their magic upon each other and that magic collides head-on, it’s like a head-on car collision. The magic is immediately sent back towards the caster, with catastrophic effects. For this reason, combat magic is extremely dangerous. The effect is similar when a mage hits stationary magic, such as a ward, defense, illusion, or ambient magic in the area, but the repelled magic is much more scattered and less dangerous. However, the magic that it hits also attempts to retreat from the oncoming magic. This will cause some minor concussive damage to whatever person or object the magic protects or surrounds and will case some of the magic to shear off in its attempt to avoid the other magic. Mages with a focus on destroying wards or negating the magic of others will have less scatter effect when interacting with other magic than the magic of other mages. Leila Abdi and her focus on “revealing what is hidden” is a good example of this sort of focus. This is the same reason why magical wards do not explode on impact; the focus of the mage who created the ward was (presumably) to protect the person, and this gives the ward a magical property that mitigates the effects of magic-on-magic-aversion. Yes, you are using magic to do something magical… with magic. Keep up kiddos. Magic is weird, and allows for a whole bunch of rules paradoxes if you aren’t careful. If we can’t avoid the paradoxes, we might as well try to document and mitigate them. Target Recognition Thankfully, despite the constant ricochet of ambient magic, most of it is pretty harmless. You only need to be worried about your magic coming back to hurt you if you cast a spell with intent to do harm, and if the target of your magic could possibly be applied to you. Remember, your intent is super important in spellcasting. For example, if you cast a spell to cook potatoes, it hits you, your spell notes that you are not potatoes, and the spell does nothing. When you cast a cooking spell at a potato, you know that your target is a potato. You recognize it as a potato and name it as such internally. Since you are definitely not a potato, the spell won’t have any effect on you. On the other hand, if you cast a spell to hurt someone, it hits you, your spell notes that you are a “someone,” and spell hurts you. When you cast a spell in combat, you know that your target is a person. Not their name, not their personality, not their beliefs, nothing. You literally know nothing about this person except for the fact that they are a person. Therefore, when the spell hits you, it will recognize you as also a person, and hurt you too. This means that the ONLY time that combat magic is remotely safe to use is when you have a very specific focus that allows you enough precision to choose specific targets. In that case, the spell would hit you, note that you weren’t the intended target, and do nothing. This means that combat magic against non-human entities (wild animals, monsters, etc.) is CONSIDERABLY less dangerous. This distinction was only a footnote in magical theory until The Enemy began using monsters in his army, first seen in The Overnight Defense. This, ironically, allows those who fought against The Enemy to attack his forces with greater strength. This is one of the reasons why having a magical focus is super important, especially for combat magic. A focus will help you specify the target of your magic and mitigate this collateral damage. If your focus is vague enough that you aren’t able to discern between targets AT ALL, it doesn’t matter who you are aiming for; if your spell hits you, you’re taking the brunt of it. In a way, noting the "target" of your magic is a tiny, instantaneous secondary focus. All that to say that magic bounces around all the time in this world, with no ill effects unless the focus of the caster is super vague; hence why most experienced mages highly, HIGHLY encourage novice mages to find a focus BEFORE unlocking their abilities. The Three Major Impossibles No mage has the power to control the mind of another person. This is due to the magic within all souls acting like two positive ends of a magnet pushing against each other. No two mages can mix their powers to create greater power. Similar concept to rule one. Magic has a tendency to not like touching magic that’s different from it. Even mages with similar focuses will be unable to do this since everyone’s magic is uniquely related to them. Rather than combining powers, mages who attempt this will likely find their magic flying back at them at top speed. Unsurprisingly, this makes magical combat VERY DANGEROUS and therefore incredibly rare. It is impossible to have more than one focus. Again, based on the same concept as the above. Some mages have attempted to have multiple specific focuses, thinking that they’d be able to control them with the same amount of precision a single vague focus would offer, but in reality, it just doesn’t work. Magic does not like mixing with magic of a different focus; either have one vague goal or one specific one. The Enemy Exception This is why The Enemy is so terrifying. Whatever he and Robin found in the Western Forest… it breaks these rules of magic. The Enemy has proven that he can control minds by making puppets of his enemies, combined his power with that of Robin on multiple occasions, and seems to have multiple focuses involving bending reality AND revenge AND validation. He shouldn’t be able to do any of this, and yet… here we are. Category:Magic